1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to the field of databases and more particularly to the field of data storage format and presentation in connection with databases.
2. Description of Related Art
In an on-line database query system, data from the databases is presented in a user-readable form to a user screen. Presentation software of the database query system interprets the data and determines how the information is shown to the user. When the format of the data is changed, it is often necessary to also modify the presentation software to account for the change. For example, if the data of the database represents a set of business listings that are presented to the user in black and white (i.e., without any color component), and a color feature is subsequently added to the listings, then the data in the database is modified to include the new feature and, at the same time, the presentation software is modified to include code to properly interpret and display the new feature.
However, for on-line query systems that run continuously and handle large amounts of data, it may be impractical (to both the users and the operators) to require modification of the presentation software every time there is a modification to the data format such as adding a new data attribute. This difficulty may be compounded when the data represents advertisements for businesses that may be modified/enhanced in any number ways by the represented businesses in order to facilitate the advertising effect.
According to one aspect of the invention, a method of displaying data in a database includes storing each item of data as a generic object. A script is provided that indicated handling of attributes and fields of each object. A parse engine is provided that interprets the script and accesses a representation of the generic objects to present data of the generic objects to users in which modifications to the generic objects are handled by modifying only the data and the script.